The Gazette 1974

ev ent of a rapid liquidation, its accounts would have to be consolidated with the public company's accounts, formally, in regard to the premises in course of com- pletion an institution's solicitor is not too concerned to Make any unusual queries about planning, provided that he is satisfied that the buildings have been built M accordance with the appropriate planning and buil- d i n g bye-laws. As regards Office Buildings, the full premises in- cluding car parks should normally be held under full repairing and insuring leases. In the case of multi- Jottings, arrangements by way of service charges should 6e imposed on all tenants, in order to make provision J°r the cost (1) of maintaining the structure of the Building and (2) of replacing lifts, central heating sys- tem and essential machinery. Each tenant must contri- bute his share of the insurance premium. There are more difficult problems to meet in the case of Industrial Buildings. One must ensure that the divid- Mg walls are party walls in the case of large units and 'hat liability for their maintenance has been shared du a l ly between the tenants. The maintenance of pri- v ate roadways on industrial estates will have to be c °nsidered, including the provision of a service charge amongst the tenants. In the case of Shopping Centres, the landlord will nave to decide at an early stage whether he will give e *clusive franchises for particular trades to individual M°p tenants, but the current trend appears to be for a Jtoe-for-all situation permitting traders to open up in Mtoct competition with one another. It is also necessary M a sizeable shopping centre to establish a Tenants' Association similar to a co-operative to promote the Ce ntre as a whole in respect of problems like cleansing, Car parking and security. In the case of Blocks of Flats, Mese may in general be looked upon as an office block occupied by a large number of tenants, as long as the teases are well drawn, and the owner chooses the tenants Hi th care. . There are also many intricate problems possibly aris- Mg from value-added tax. . Mr. Meredith emphasised that he had drafted addi- tional requisitions on title, mainly relating to the stan- dard requirements raised by solicitors for mortgagees; Mese are fully set out in Appendix A. Mr. Meredith ex plained the necessity for these additional requisitions 1,1 detail. Mr. Curran, in an Appendix, set out in an orderly as hion a useful check list of instructions in convey- an °ing matters, as well as the points of procedure to be n oted in the case of a purchase and of a sale. He stressed Mat it would be most useful for solicitors to read ^loeran's Practical Conveyancing. Sunday afternoon, Mr. Thomas Fitzpatrick, Soli- a n d Minister for Lands, delivered a lecture on present and Future Trends in Land Law in Ireland". said that the European Communities Acts of 1972 a nd of 1973 make provisions to enable Ireland to ful- M obligations arising from membership. The Treaty of °Me provides that the Council shall issue Directives t o enable nationals of one member State to acquire and u ? e land and buildings in another member State pro- dded the common agricultural policy is not infringed. Mdce 22 December 1972 Regulations have been made pinging the various Directives relating to agricultural a n d into force. Broadly under the Land Act, 1965,

permission will not be granted to foreigners to purchase land in order to engage in forms of production in competition with Irish farmers. There is a much wider draft Directive by which nationals of other member States would be allowed to purchase agricultural land on the same conditions as Irish citizens but we would try to enforce a lengthy transitional period before it comes into force. As regards agricultural leases, this should present no problem, as the present tendency has been in favour of full ownership. Longer leases can be granted with the consent of the Land Commission, and the tendency towards granting long leases has grown considerably recently. There are two developments, however, which may tend to hinder this. (1) It is intended to introduce legislation to imple- ment a Directive which encourages farmers in the 55 to 69 age group, who wish to leave and sell their farms, to receive a special incentive for retirement. (2) Ma c ra na Feirme presented a Report of Farm Inheritance and Succession to the Minister last Novem- ber. In this Report, it is suggested that the owner should lease part of the farm to his son for a minimum of 12 years, after which time legal ownership would be trans- ferred to the son, who would receive the stock and machinery free. Having traced briefly the history of land in Ireland the Minister emphasised that initially, after 1881, the Land Commission was (i) a rent fixing body later devel- oped by law; (ii) a tenant-purchase agency for the conversion of tenants into proprietors, and (iii) a great purchaser and distributor of land in carrying out land reform. The total area distributed under all Land Acts to date exceeds million acres. The Land Commission now consists of one Judicial Commissioner, and not more than four lay Commis- sioners. The Judicial Commissioner alone, as an Appeals Tribunal, deals mainly with price appeals; the Commis- sioners have sole power to determine matters relating to (i) the person from whom the land is to be acquired; (ii) the actual land to be acquired; (iii) the price to be paid; and (iv) the persons to whom the land shall be allotted. Since 1939, an attempt has been made to resettle 35,000 acres per a nnum amongst tenants. Since 1962, a sizeable farm unit consists of 40 to 45 acres of good arable land, as compared with 20 to 25 acres before that. More details are contained in the pamphlet The Land Problem in Ireland and its Settlement, pre- pared by the present Secretary, Mr. O'Brien. As regards compulsory acquisition, the Land Com- mission has been invested with extensive powers to acquire lands for the purpose of relieving congestion, subject to the limitation that the determination as to the lands to be acquired is a matter exclusively within the province of the Commissioners. In order to over- come various legal decisions, the Land Act, 1965, intro- duced important new provisions aimed at strengthening the acquisition and resumption powers of the Land Commission. The area acquired compulsorily in recent times comes to about 10,000 acres per year. Land acquired compulsorily has to be paid in La nd Bonds, but there has been much criticism recently of the fall in value of the Bonds due mainly to rising interest rates. Th e re is no immediate prospect of an improvement in this regard.

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